Let Gaz from Supergrass, Alex James and KT Tunstall guide you through their hits

Alex James, Blur bassist and new Classic FM recruit, is squirming on his tatty sofa. He takes another drag on his cigarette, flicks his fringe and jabs at his bass. “Err, I’ve never known what the chords are to this song. They are somewhere round here? It’s very Anglo-Saxon. Very Cro-Magnon.”

Having James as your bass teacher turns out to be every bit as louche and theatrical as you would hope. He may joke – “money for nothing, guys” – about Blur’s thrashy hit Song 2, but of course he knows what he’s doing and after 15 minutes we have it mastered, sort of.

He mutters something about pedals, which I miss, I’m still staring at his garish daisy-print cushions. Luckily, I can press pause, rewind him and pick up where we were. Somewhat tragically but not unexpectedly, I am not having an actual one-on-one tutorial with James, but a virtual one, as part of a new series of download-only video tutorials, Now Play It, which is hoping to inject a little oomph into the doddery world of sheet music, tablature and “mastering an instrument” – or at least getting more than halfway to playing Coldplay’s Yellow.

“Things haven’t really moved on from Bert Weedon’s Play in a Day songbooks – you know, all the old guys round a fireplace, playing the standards,” explains Ant Cauchi, the series’ producer, whose digital marketing company, Outside Line, looks after websites for artists such as Paul McCartney (and recently convinced Macca to pop his YouTube cherry for his most recent album, Memory Almost Full).

“We want to get people excited about playing music,” Cauchi continues. “And having the members of Blur or Supergrass as your teacher is a good incentive to have a go.”

Sold as downloads, each episode features a 30-minute lesson with your chosen hero and costs £3.99. Alongside the Britpoppers, an impressive roster of teachers includes KT Tunstall, the Magic Numbers, Athlete and Turin Brakes. Coldplay are in the pipeline and McCartney, their “holy grail”, is looking likely.

Cauchi is after what he calls the “campfire amateurs”, the four million guitar owners in Britain – which incidentally is the number of guitarists that Weedon’s website claims he has influenced over the past 40 years – who don’t have the time or money for formal training. And, with the Government yet to fulfil its promise that every child should have the opportunity to play a musical instrument, he is hoping to score a hit in the “edutainment” arena, and encourage youngsters to learn music by emulating their idol.

Friend of Cauchi, Blur drummer and MP-in-waiting Dave Rowntree was the first to sign up. He believes the series can have a significant role to play.“Music education isn’t what it was when I was at school,” Rowntree says. “A lot of people of my generation could play a bit of something, but that’s not true now. It’s become, or at least pop music has, part of celeb culture, not so much a hobby or interest any more.

“The idea is to show that it’s possible for anyone to play an instrument, to demystify it.”

Part of the fun of the lessons is the differing presentation styles. If James is the wannabe Jeffrey Barnard, head girl material is what springs to mind watching a briskly articulate Tunstall run through the parts to her hit Black Horse and Cherry Tree. Like Tunstall, Rowntree’s lesson is one of the fluent ones, which isn’t a surprise considering he is musically trained and was brought up by musician parents.

“I played the piano from 5. When I hit 11 I started to play the bagpipes to p*** off my parents, and when that stopped working I started on the drums.

“When we were filming I started out by focusing on musical theory but quickly realised that was really boring. In the end we treated the lesson like a film, showing how I came up with a part, how to play it, how it weaves into a song, plus anecdotes about what was going on with the band at the time.”

The format of the episodes is engagingly low-key – shot at artists’s studios or homes, they are a bit like Through the Keyhole with a learning bit chucked in. Cauchi explains the relaxed and forthcoming tone as being down to the fact that “all the musicians relish the fact that they are being asked to deconstruct a song rather than why they called their album X”.

Rowntree concurs. “Everyone loves to tell you how they make their living. Ask a musician how they did that amazing lick and they will bang on about it all night.”

Equally appealing must be the fact that a “lite” £1.99 version of the tutorials, consisting of just the music videos with the chord boxes, will qualify for the official chart alongside CDs and downloads. It is hoped that they will also pep up the market in sheet music, which has been damaged by lyrics and notation being freely shared over the internet.

Axemen of earlier eras such as Pete Townshend, Brian May and Eric Clapton were all self-confessed Weedon acolytes; Cauchi is aiming for Now Play It to be as significant. Rowntree is also optimistic: “Twenty-five years ago, people would sit with headphones plugged into a record player, figuring out how their fave guitarist did a solo.

“The beauty of this is you can download a clip and the musician himself explains it to you.

“You can’t do that by listening to a CD. It’s an exciting way to use new technology.”

Tips from the greats

Alex James, the bassist in Blur, on Song 2:
“It’s the distorted sound that makes it energetic. And the fact that I hadn’t been to bed.”

Gaz Coombes, the guitarist in Supergrass, on Richard II:
“You need to move your hand up to, erm . . . what fret is this?”

KT Tunstall, guitarist, on Black Horse and the Cherry Tree:
“The loop pedal is a fantastic gadget, but tricky, as you are using your feet. I highly recommend tap-dancing lessons.”

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